When we surveyed the couples registered with the International Couples' Website, we received enthusiastic comments to the idea of setting up a mailing list, and here it is!
This mailing list is for us, who are married (or engaged) with a person of a different nationality. Let's talk of our experiences, difficulties, anecdotes, merits and joys of sharing your life with someone coming from a different culture!
By Mami and Federico Canzian.
Living and working abroad adds extra stress and challenges in an Expats life.
My clients feel isolated, lonely, confused about their career path and/or lack of meaningful work or feel they have no purpose. Some dislike the culture of the host country.
Teaming with me they develop systems to make the Expat experience work for them as a stimulating adventure or accept it isn't what they want and repatriate home without guilt or shame but with excitement and joy..
Check out the Love Immigrant question page as well as information on immigrating here and club pages for groups I started.
By Julia Ferguson Andriessen, 20 Aug 2001.
This web ring is for homepages with interest to international couples. Everything from "how we met" to immigration and so on.
By Rachel & Ryuji, 13 May 2001.
This is a friendly place to gather those who are married or engaged to a person of a different nationality.
Come in to tell us about your joys and sorrows: bureaucracy problems, language problems, religion problems... You're not alone.
Attention: absolutely NO MARRIAGE SEEKERS ALLOWED! This is for those who have already found their Miss or Mr. Right.
By Joanna, 14 Nov 2000.
This project is intended to gather true stories of couples that met online and compile them in a book. The stories will be published in the first person and may be edited for style, clarity or length, but I will be keeping it just the way you wrote it. The idea is to have a book in a "Short Stories" Style.
The names will be kept in the stories, unless you wish otherwise. The names of all the contributors will also be added at the end of the book, unless you wish otherwise.
This book is to prove that you can find real love on the Internet. Since I met my husband, 3 years-ago, through the Internet, I have been wanting to do this project.
By Dany Trainor, 12 Apr 2000.
Multi-racial families, created by biology or adoption, have no doubt been around since some of the earliest travelers set out to meet and explore, to war and conquer, to learn and love. Yet it wasn't until 1967, the year I was born, that laws against mixed race marriages were struck down by the United States Supreme Court.
Today, at least two million American children are of mixed racial descent, and mixed-race marriages are on the rise. According to a 1996 article in the Seattle Times, the number of interracial couples has jumped by 275 percent since 1970 (compare to 16 percent increase in the number of same-race couples during same time period).
Some children of mixed-racial descent identify themselves as members of one group or another (socialized perhaps by appearance, their parents, or racism). Some proudly proclaim their multi-racial identities. And still others switch their declarations at different times in their lives.
When you think about it, even those who aren't of mixed descent have some diversity somewhere in their family. At most, it's just a question of degree.
And ever more families are adopting children of different hues, both from their own home countries and internationally.
Many of these parents and grandparents make that extra effort to offer children the gifts and insights of their own cultures while respecting and fostering a sense of appreciation for the child's own ethnic culture and country of birthday.
As the population increases, we've seen a slight growth in the number of children's and young adult books published that explore mixed-race family themes.
However, the need persists and will grow with each passing generation.
By Cynthia Leitich Smith, 4 Apr 2000.
OpenHere is one of the 10 largest index and search sites on the Internet and is specifically focused on creating resources for the family. The link above is to the "Cultural and Ethnic Diversity" category.
By Sara, 5 Mar 2000.
MAVIN The articulate journal of the mixed race
experience
600 First Avenue, Suite 600, Seattle, WA 98104, U.S.A.
Editor in chief/publisher: Matthew A. Kelley
Ph: +1-206-622-7101
Toll-free: +1.888.77MAVIN
Fax: +1-206-622-2231 info@mavinfoundation.org
MAVIN is a quarterly print journal dedicated to the celebration of the mixed race experience in America. MAVIN's mission is to create a pan-collegiate voice and to provide financial and logistical support to encourage mixed race student organizations across the country. MAVIN is an inclusive journal that advances increased awareness and recognizes the diversity of Americàs mixed race experience.
MAVIN has created The MAVIN Listserv to function as an open Internet forum to talk about the magazine and the multiracial experience in America. Please visit our listserv often and increase the communication! To access the MAVIN listserv, go to: groups.yahoo.com/group/mavin/join. Joining the listserv is free and anyone can join.
We have many international visitors, some of whom are searching for information before marrying.
We join International Couples in connecting people, building community and serving as a supportive resource. Our mission is to help people succeed at marriage and other couple relationships by providing information, skills-training, and encouragement and by offering a confidential learning community where people can share openly and benefit from each other's experience.
Kids Bilingual Network is a free voluntary venture aimed at providing parents of bilingual or multilingual children with lists of contacts from parents in a similar situation from all over the world.
By Willi Prochnow Sletten, 26 May 2001.
Le premier site français d'information sur le bilinguisme et les langues.
Even if you don«t speak French at all (like me), you might find it useful, because it contains a lot of useful and up-to date links to other bilingual web sites.
Apart from that, I have been told that they will soon have some English and German language pages in the site..
By Willi Prochnow Sletten, 10 Sep 2000.
This Website has been designed to be a resource for parents and others who are interested in bringing up children using more than one language. Most of the material that we have gathered comes from the Bilingual Families Mailinglist. If you are a member of the Bilingual Families Mailinglist, or maybe in the process of becoming one, the blue pages on our web may be of special interest to you. We highly recommend the growing FAQ archive where a lot of knowledge from listmembers is gathered.
By Henrik Holm, 30 Mar 2000.
Most international couples are also bilingual (multilingual) couples. If this is your situation, you will find very useful to check this resource.
This page is intended primarily as a place for bilingual parents to find information and resources to help them raise their children bilingually.
There is also an associated mailing list. If you would like to receive more information on the list, send an e-mail message to majordomo@nvg.unit.no containing only 'info biling-fam' in the body of your message.
A quarterly publication with lots of articles on bilingual/multilingual families. They also sell books on the topic. To have documentation and a free copy contact:
The Bilingual Family Newsletters
Multilingual Matters
Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Rd,
Clevedon, Avon, England. BS21 7SJ
Tel. +44-1275-876519
Fax +44-1275-343096
info@multilingual-matters.com
Crossing Borders is an e-zine for those new to America and Americans with foreign spouses. It's about life during and after I-130 or K-1 visa, fitting in, rebuilding life, life with a foreign spouse. It attempts to address issues that happen after you receive your immigration visa. It helps us deal with questions, fears, anticipation and worry. How to adapt, getting through culture shock, insurance, tax, credit, career, permanent residency, citizenship and more!
It is published fortnightly or every other Friday, delivered via e-mail straight into your in-box. On the website, you will find back issues sorted by month.
By Ken & Lynette, 20 Dec 2001.
Ben & I are both from English speaking countries and America & Great Britain share a "special relationship". However there are so many language and cultural differences that we've come across. Being in an international relationship is challenging for many reasons. If you want to live together then you have to deal with the legalities of immigration. However, nothing prepares you for what it's like to be married to someone from another country, another continent. Nothing can change the fact that we grew up on opposite sides of the Atlantic. I can't imagine what it's like to be an American child. This all means that we have to work hard at understanding where the other person is coming from.
This page is part of Ben and Jennie's US-UK Marriage website, which features also interesting and funny primers on UK culture, US culture, and a US-UK dictionary.
By Jennie and Ben, 29 Nov 2001.
Il sito Web per le Coppie Italo Spagnole. Espalia nasce da un gruppo di Coppie Miste Italo-Spagnole che, venute a contatto casualmente, hanno continuato a vedersi e ad aiutarsi regolarmente dando vita ad una vera e propria amicizia.
By Cuca & Max, 24 Oct 2001.
An exploration of the historical, political, social, economic, and cultural elements and issues that make up today's Asian American community. Asian-Nation has a page within the "Issues" that discusses interracial marriage and dating.
By C.N. Le, 16 Jul 2001.
Get the Canuck's point of view of life with a Hangoogin!
Get the Hangoogin's point of view of life with a Canuck!
The site features also a discussion forum.
By Daniel & Sun-Duk, 27 Feb 2001.
In Japan, international couples come across to many difficulties. And sometimes it is thought that international marriages is hard. But, in the life of international couples, many happy, surprising, exciting, wonderful events are contained. Let's try to talk about international marriages!
This site is a platform to for exchange information and experience for binational couples with one German partner or living in Germany. The language of the site is German only.
DutchAmericanCouples started as a mailing list on ONElist. With the first message posted on the 11th of January 1999, it soon grew to be a very active list about relationships involving two people from different countries (primarily the U.S. and the Netherlands).
We are part of an NGO in Istanbul, with several thousand intercultural, interreligious and multilingual marriages, working as a support network and towards improving noncitizen rights and immigration laws. We are interested to find past performance and expert opinion on this subject. Regards. Patricia Goncuoglu
The topic of this list is the discussion of relationship issues between Asians and non-Asians. As such, it can be of interest for some of us.
The mailing list is moderated so that subscribers can discuss the issues in a supportive and non-judgmental atmosphere. Flames and off-topic conversation will be elided by the moderator.
To subscribe, send an e-mail message to majordomo@xmission.com with
"subscribe inter-asia" in the body of your message.
Bilingualism is a field that has grown rapidly over the past ten years. It is almost a cliché now that one in three of the world's population is bi- or multi-lingual. Globalization has increased people's general awareness of the extent of language contact and linguistic diversity. Questions concerning bilingualism and multilingualism take on increasing importance from both practical and scholarly points of view. Although bilingualism as a research topic has a very long history; today, interest in this field is unprecedented. Since 1997, numerous journals have appeared and international conferences in different parts of the world have taken place.
The Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona is honored to host the fifth edition of the International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB) in March 2005. ISB began in 1997 with the initiative of Li Wei and Nick Miller at The University of Newcastle upon Tyne and it has been organized biennially, since then, by Li Wei and Nick Miller at The University of Newcastle upon Tyne (1999), by JeanineTreffers-Daller at The University of the West of England in Bristol (2001), and by Jeff MacSwan at Arizona State University in Tempe (2003). ISB has grown from 200 participants at its first meeting in Newcastle to 700 in its most recent gathering in Arizona in just six years. It seeks to provide a forum that brings together researchers working in a wide variety of topics that include psycholinguistics, code-switching, bilingual education, power and ideology, language change, child and adult bilingual language acquisition, language planning and policy, research methods and theory, among others.
The 5th edition of ISB is going to be held for the first time in a plurilingual location. Barcelona is the vibrant capital of the autonomous region of Catalonia where both Catalan and Spanish are the co-official languages. It is also a place where contact with many world languages takes places as a result of recent immigration trends to the city. Close by are the bilingual autonomous regions of Galicia, Valencia, Balearic Islands and the Basque Country where speakers of different languages have coexisted for centuries.
